With a Yorkshire church’s congregation dropping to single figures, the Bishop of Wakefield is welcoming Channel 4’s Priest Idol as ‘a gift’. What with less than half of Britons having always believed and all that squirming we did that time Jeremy Paxman embarrassed Blair into denying he prayed with Bush, I can understand the bishops’ desperation.

Stateside, MSNBC reckons god’s a critical factor in the elections, while in England religion’s something you practice behind closed doors. What’s the point, British Christians say, in employing the queen to defend the faith and then praying yourself? We Britons tend to look in such dismay at those who practice a faith, that Prince Charles has come up with a novel solution: he’ll defend all faiths, so that Muslims, Jews etc, won’t have to bother with god either. After all, reasons the heir to the throne and leadership of Anglicans the world over, all religions are the same, aren’t they?

Anyway. The Priest Idol’s sure to have his work cut out.

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I guess Madonna’s alleged desecration of the Kabbalah mirrors her previous approach to Christianity. Way back in 1989, she was upsetting people like Ian Paisely by portraying Jesus as non-white in the video for Like a Prayer (on the issue of how Jesus would have come to be born a WASP, Paisley falls silent). Paisley could get away with this in Northern Ireland, of course, because in a place where people murder each other over nuances in Christianity, race relations laws do not apply.

Nevertheless, she’s certainly spilt the Israelis. Tourism wonks have welcomed her assertion that, ‘it is no more dangerous to be here than it is to be in New York’, while (surely only extreme diehard) fans whooped it up for an exclusive new tune: Don’t cry for me Palestina. On the other hand, many others have been seen wailing a very different tune at the famous wall.

‘Madonna don’t preach’, say (some) fans

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You can tell a company’s in trouble when it no longer knows what to call itself and nobody illustrates this better than MyTravel (or is it Airtours). If I hadn’t known that Airtours rebranded itself MyTravel some years ago, I might have been left very confused by their constant name changes.

While we had a very good holiday with very little contact with our tour operator, we decided this would probably be our last package. The whole package concept is simply struggling to remain relevant in an age when it’s so easy to find and book hotels yourself and when flights are so cheap. But more than that MyTravel Airtours simply fails to add any value to the holidays it sells. In fact, it takes value away.

Right from the start the shear size of the operation caused them to trip up. We were about to board our plane to Faro, when we told to return to the departure lounge. A Palma flight had broken down and our plane was needed for those people because some of them had to meet a MyTravel Airtours cruise. It would be unfair to hold up the cruise ship, because the facilities on the ship aren’t as good as those at Manchester Airport. At first it was to be four hours before we’d get any further information. In the event they gave us someone else’s plane and we left just three hours late, leaving a domino of delays behind us.

Every plane will have passengers aboard with excellent reasons for getting to their destinations on time. If we’d been meeting a third party cruise or whatever, MyTravel Airtours would have done nothing. Better to go with a company where delays are more likely to be contained, like a budget airline.

In flight, we got a film about the perils of foreign travel. ‘When you’re abroad, it can sometimes feel like home. But as experienced tour operators, we know things are different’. The upshot was don’t book any excursions with anyone other than MyTravel Airtours, because the locals aren’t to be trusted.

On arrival we got a welcome pack that promised ‘open now and make your holiday extra special’. How so? Well there was very, very short list of excursions the rep would be selling (e.g. reps’ cabaret, but no dolphin watching, cave tours, big game fishing, jeep safaris or boat trips). We could buy a phone card, complete a customer satisfaction questionnaire (five reasons to do so provided) and pay extra for our seats on the flight home. That’s right for 8.5 Euro each we could book seats now (instead of at check-in). We’d sit together (just like we do anyway), but might be separated by an aisle. If we didn’t like our seats, that would our tough luck.

Coach transfers are one way MyTravel Airtours claims to add value to a holiday. Our resort was just 45 minutes drive from the airport, but it took 2 hours 45 for MyTravel Airtours to get us there on the way home because we had to visit so many other hotels in other resorts on the way.

Finally, they try to add value by including in flight entertainment. On the way back we had Scooby Doo 2 which was pretty poor but that’s not their fault. This was: just as the villain’s been unmasked and said, ‘and I would have gotten away with it, if it wasn’t for you darn kids’ and the mystery is about to be explained, they cut in with ‘MyTravel Airways has exclusive in flight offers on J-Lo Glow. Shimmer and glow with J-Lo Glow etc.’. Had we cared how the film ended, we’d have been mightily pissed off.

Of course they could innovate. On the day we left, MyTravel Airtours dumped a couple with a young child at the hotel. Their room wasn’t ready and they were told they’d have to wait four hours in the heat with no baggage. They’d have been travelling since the early hours. Yet MyTravel Airtours had completed three pick-ups for the homeward bound before 7am that morning. Knowing the rooms are there, why not use some muscle to get them cleaned earlier for check-in on arrival? Why not cut time waiting around by completing airport check-ins on the coach? Yet MyTravel Airtours seems to have little concern for the customer experience.

We didn’t bother with the customer feedback form because it was very, very long and mostly concerned with gathering demographic data for marketing purposes. And while it may sometimes be a little cheaper to book a package, the value tour operators subtract from a holiday makes going independently all the more worthwhile.

People watching in Praia da Rocha……I’m not that far from this ice-cream parlour……Touched by J-Lo

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I read in Popbitch that Islamic suicide bombers wrap their penises in white cotton before going on a job in order to protect them from the blast. While I always treat Popbitch with caution and it does sound like a whacko piece of anti-Islamic propaganda, I guess it may be true. After all, many believe the main reward for martyrdom is 72 virgins (Hamas propagate this when recruiting) and so it would make sense to keep your equipment well protected. But what of the rest of you? This seems to imply that body parts destroyed in this life don’t make it to the next, so there’s a chance the penis will be all alone, so powerful are modern explosives.

As you’d expect, many Muslims are embarrassed by and dispute the 72 virgins thing. Yet it’s a debate that’s been going on for centuries. Writing at the turn of the fourteenth century Al-Suyuti said, ‘the penis of the Elected never softens. The erection is eternal… Each chosen one will marry seventy… and all will have appetising vaginas.’ But many reckon Al-Suyuti got it wrong and it’s not virgins, but raisins and other fruit that awaits each Muslim (not just martyrs) in heaven. What a bummer that would be, trying to make 72 raisins last an eternity.

Mad Mullah Murder……Christianity no more inventive than Islam

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Over at Harry’s Place they’re invoking Polly Toynbee to support the nonsense argument that fox hunting’s so insignificant it shouldn’t be on the agenda. It’s the same argument speeding motorists use to argue that the police should ignore their crimes and concentrate on murderers and rapists.

Yet if our increasingly irrelevant parliament is to regain any respect it needs to make time to address all the people’s concerns. Politicos tend to bore the majority of people who care little for the day-to-day business of parliament. Only by addressing – and arbitrating upon – popular issues that capture the public’s imagination can that institution hope to regain its relevance.

Suddenly, parliament going with the clear will of the people and enabling Labour to honour a manifesto commitment, transforms it into a bully of minorities. More nonsense. This is a most vile minority who take pleasure in animal suffering and like to smear the blood of their kills on each other’s faces. Long may they be bullied.

And no issue does more to show up Blair’s incompetence. Instead of quickly executing the 1997 manifesto commitment, Blair decided to renege and seek a compromise where none can be made: there’s no halfway house. He demonstrated that Labour manifesto commitments (many more of which have been broken willy-nilly) are worthless and proved himself untrustworthy. But worse for Tony, he gave the Countryside Alliance all the time in the world to organise and become the biggest thorn in his side. Long may they hound him.

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Comedy seems to be an essential element to British security alerts. Buckingham Palace is compromised by Batman, while those who invade the House of Commons are apprehended by men in tights.

I heard first about the latter on the radio and have admit to being a little disappointed by TV pictures that revealed the pro-hunting lobby wasn’t getting much of kicking after all (even though I know that’s terribly, terribly wrong). I don’t believe in bashing the BBC, but it has been pro-hunting. It’s relied on reporters embedded in pro-hunt groups (all of whom have gone native) while rarely interviewing the anti-hunt lobby. This will be why pro-hunt protestors chose to tip-off only the BBC on their House of Commons invasion.

Similarly, the reports of alleged police brutality were greatly hyped. Here reactionary pro-hunt blogger Laban Tall displays the worst pictures he could find; a couple of guys bleeding from cuts to the head. Head wounds always bleed surprisingly heavily and these won’t have been have caused by police batons; if they had, they’d be far worse. Meanwhile the Mail, which hysterically likened the clashes to a civil war, also struggled to find any convincing supporting evidence of battered pro-hunters.

The thing is, if you decide to riot and storm parliament you have to expect the odd cut and bruise. But only twelve people required treatment and the most likely cause of injury was crushing and stamping from fellow protestors trying to break the police line. Had they been football hooligans, the police would have got stuck in with proper baton charges and horses leading the way (like hunting, this would have been fun but wrong).

These guys think being ripped apart by hounds is a humane way to die, yet when push comes to shove a little cut to the head is all it takes to bring on the tears.

On animal fashion, morality and suffering……‘Celebrity worship essential’, say scientists (the Bryan Ferry connection)

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Just before I left for my holidays, the New Economics Foundation launched one of those withering attacks on the big retailers for turning our towns into clones and springing up ‘like weeds’ pushing out the indigenous small shop keepers who give a place its character. Yet the idea that small shop keepers give anywhere character is nonsense, as is the idea that anyone would take seriously a town centre bereft of major retailers. Places bereft of major retailers are generally in decline and it’s independents and charity shops that move in like weeds rather than chain stores.

It’s a bizarre argument that says a town with an independent butcher, baker and toy shop has more character than one with a supermarket. You’re invited to download the NEF survey and award your town points for the diversity of its facilities. It gets points for each type of shop it has and each independently owned local shop gets ten times as many points as those belonging to chains, even if it’s expensive, offers poor customer service and has rude staff (that’s character, I guess).

In truth independently owned shops are also clones because communities tend to place similar demands on their retailers. So an independent butcher in Manchester looks just like an independent butcher in London. I’ve just come back from holiday on the Algarve, where the tourist shops and bars were all the same as the tourist shops and bars I’ve encountered in Greece, Majorca and Turkey, despite their diverse ownership. They’re all responding to similar demands.

Character and diversity come not from shopping (from which we all want the same things). Shops (like transport, schools and hospitals) are part of the essential infrastructure upon which an interesting place can be built. Character and diversity come from a town’s architecture, public art, open spaces, sports teams, places of entertainment and unique attractions that people have to travel to the town for. Little shops add very little to the mix, which is why people have stopped using them.

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While not as innovative a thriller as Gardner’s first work, Losing Gemma, The Mermaid’s Purse certainly made for an excellent holiday read. We’re in typical thriller territory – stalkerville – and Gardner plays up to that in many ways with protagonist, English lecturer Cass Bainbridge, too close to the trees to see the wood. So as the suspense builds you’re either willing Cass to wake-up or praying Gardner delivers a quick twist or two. In the end Gardner delivers most cleverly with a strategy calculated to subvert the genre and put us all back on our feet.

This is a novel about family and identity and, to my mind, how over dependent we can be on family when defining who we are. So, for me, the conclusions Cass came to were a little too convention and I’d have enjoyed her more if she’d gained a greater independence from her past.

People watching in Praia da Rocha

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell……Notes on a Scandal by Zoë Heller

If you found my comments useful, let Amazon know by clicking The Mermaid’s Purse and hitting the ‘yes’ button underneath their copy of this review. You may buy while you’re there.

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Okay, so I’m no longer anywhere near this ice cream parlour and haven’t been for a couple of days, but hey, it’s nice to keep you jealous that little bit longer. The plan for the last two weeks (do nothing) has been well executed, even if I do say so myself.

I have some people watching to report, but first I feel obliged to mention the weather and the hotel. Apart from a short blip, at over 30^oC it sometimes felt like being in sauna at the gym, but fortunately the afternoons tended to bring a little breeze. That blip came on the first Thursday, when we awoke to heavy rain which induced a level of nervousness the locals did nothing to abate. Popping over to the tourist information office, we asked if they had a weather report and got a stiff ‘No’, followed by conspicuous staring at some ‘paperwork’. A similar enquiry at the hotel was returned with a shrug and speaka-no-inglishe look. So it was off to an internet café (something I’d planned to avoid), where we learned thunderstorms were forecast for the Friday with normal service to be resumed from Saturday. Anyway. In the event it all cleared up by the Thursday lunchtime and the thunderstorms were no shows.

And Hotel Jupiter was a great holiday hotel (arrow points to our room). Nice big rooms, great location and a good pool (if slightly small). Buffet breakfasts are never as good in resorts as in cities, but Jupiter was fine (albeit with squash instead of juice) even if they only offer one hot option a day (e.g. eggs or sausage or bacon or mushrooms) so an English breakfast comes in instalments.

Later I shall rant about MyTravel Airtours, but back to the people watching. Would-be star of the poolside was Black Cherry. So named in part because Katharine and I were listening to Goldfrapp while discussing her performance, but primarily because of her resemblance to the image on the left. Obviously holidaying alone she was brave to the point of inappropriateness. News that deep tans are out hadn’t reached her and, constantly topless, she had a habit of taking Playboy-style poses at the poolside. Katharine’s idea of doing some ‘proper swimming’ for half-an-hour each day (I think we managed three times) came close to causing considerable embarrassment as Black Cherry lowered herself into the pool, not quite nipple deep and spread. Consequently, we both (at different points) found ourselves confronted by these large over tanned breasts and about to dock. And it wasn’t just us. At breakfast she liked to rub herself (always in see-through top, no bra) against seated people as she got her food. Men sniggered and women looked daggers.

Some other day, this time on the beach, we spotted a more modest big breasted girl (part of two couples) in an orange bikini having her back sun creamed by her boyfriend. Their rather fat female companion then joined at the front, allowing her fingers to go just inside the bikini top. Then instead of lying next to her companions, the fat girl angled herself above them turning her head to view orange bikini’s breasts. Later orange bikini rolled on her front and removed her top, to avoid a tan line on her back, causing fat girl to wiggle her legs in the air. We thought this display very funny.

Another poolside incident of note involved two young couples. One of the girls had disappeared and the other girl’s boyfriend was diving in an effort to impress. But he didn’t. ‘You’re going in too steep’, said his girlfriend and making him dive red-faced three more times (‘You shouldn’t splash that much’). It turned into a see-how-far-you-can-swim-under-water competition, in which she allowed him to claim victory only after he did the length the pool thanks to an awful lot of splashing near the end.

The Irish are funny lot and Praia da Rocha has a sizeable Irish quarter, with lots of live music and real Irish people singing songs in celebration of alcoholism. It makes a good change from the main strip. One night we were in Temple Bar, when some seriously loud fireworks went off. ‘Dirty-five shot dead on the main strip,’ joked the singer (post-Bali it’s what people were thinking). Anyway. That’s all it took to change the mood and bring on a some republican songs (Some say the devil is dead, and buried in Killarney/More say he rose again, more say he rose again/More say he rose again and joined the British Army) that left them all maudlin.

We spent more of our time at On the Rocks (v. lively website), watching the greeters as much as the punters. The most successful greeter actually managed to get some holiday makers to do the job for her, which we couldn’t quite understand. She got them a t-shirt each (and maybe a drink?) in return for which they spent a night of their holiday stopping people in the street with money off vouchers.

Across the road was a jewellers, into which a number of men were dragged by their women. It was tat, but certainly not cheap tat. We reckon the average time in was twenty minutes. (This reminded us of sitting in an Amsterdam bar watching clients visit the brothels across the road. They all pulled out after twenty minutes too.) The ladies always took the lead and when it was time to go, most of the guys did some strange pulling trousers up ritual as they stepped out in relief.

Anyway. That’s enough of the people. Our one excursion was out to the middle of the ocean to watch the dolphins. Very hard to get photos as you don’t where the little blighters are likely to appear and for sometime it looked like they’d be no shows. But in the end we found them, they did some jumping around, made that funny squeaky noise then suddenly moved on as we were clearly boring them.

The Mermaid’s purse by Katy Gardner……Airport Terminal better than a MyTravel Airtours cruise ship

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